Minor earthquake trembles North Country
A 3.7 magnitude earthquake hit about halfway between Ottawa and Montreal this afternoon around 1:30pm. Here’s the official information from the U.S. Geological Survey. The epicenter, according to that release, was East Hawkesbury, Ontario.
On Twitter and Facebook, people across northern St. Lawrence County, from Ogdensburg to Potsdam, said they felt the tremor. (I was in Canton and I did not.)
Naturally, earthquakes of any size put people on edge as Japan continues to suffer from the fallout of its massive earthquake.
The North Country does sit in a pretty active – although generally not severe – fault zone. A quick search through NCPR’s archives turns up earthquakes in 2002, 2006, 2007, and just last summer. The most serious was in 2002, when buildings were damaged in Clinton County. Here’s SUNY Potsdam’s Frank Revetta talking about the region’s seismic activity following that earthquake.
Listen to Brian Mann’s story this week about how the region’s nuclear aspirations sit in the wake of Japan’s crisis.
Tags: earthquake
Didn’t feel a thing here in Hamilton County.
I remember a quake that was quite strong sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s. It shook the rafters in our house in Saranac lake and sounded like a distant rumble. Like an explosion going off in the distance. A number of folks called the fire dept. thinking their furnaces had blown up.
It was pretty scary. It lasted for what seemed like a long time, but it was probably 10 seconds or less.
Didn’t feel it in LL. I remember a couple big ones, April 2002 and October 1983. Sounded like an airliner 100 feet overhead, really strange how loud it was.